Compiled by Joe Wheeler

Published by Tyndale and Focus on the Family

The Girl in the Fifth Row

By Leo Buscaglia

(Perhaps it is because I too am a professor that this story hit me with such force. I, too, took far too many students for granted, passed up many an opportunity to affirm. It is so easy just to teach the material and forget to search for the soul behind those two windows to the world: the eyes. "[The circumstances of this story] changed my life," testified Buscaglia. Well‚ the story has changed my life too. Never again have I been able to enter a classroom without trembling a little lest I too miss the last opportunity to affirm, to love. I have come to realize that unless I truly love my students—each of them‚ regardless of looks or personality—then I have no business in the classroom.)

On my first day as an assistant professor of education at the University of Southern California, I entered the classroom with a great deal of anxiety. My large class responded to my awkward smile and brief greeting with silence. For a few moments I fussed with my notes. Then I started my lecture, stammering; no one seemed to be listening.

At that moment of panic I noticed in the fifth row a poised, attentive young woman in a summer dress. Her skin was tanned, her brown eyes were clear and alert, her hair was golden. Her animated expression and warm smile were an invitation for me to go on. When I'd say something, she would nod‚ or say, "Oh, yes!" and write it down. She emanated the comforting feeling that she cared about what I was trying so haltingly to say.

I began to speak directly to her and my confidence and enthusiasm returned. After a while I risked looking about. The other students had begun listening and taking notes, This stunning young woman had pulled me through.

After class‚ I scanned the roll to find her name: Liani. Her papers‚ which I read over the subsequent weeks, were written with creativity, sensitivity and a delicate sense of humor.

I had asked all my students to visit my office during the semester, and I awaited Liani's visit with special interest. I wanted to tell her how she had saved my first day, and encourage her to develop her qualities of caring and awareness.

Liani never came. About five weeks into the semester, She missed two weeks of classes. I asked the students seated around her if they knew why. I was shocked to learn that they did not even know her name. I thought of Albert Schweitzer's poignant statement: "We are all so much together and yet we are all dying of loneliness."

I went to our dean of women. The moment I mentioned Liani's name, she winced. "Oh, I'm sorry, Leo‚" she said. "I thought you'd been told…."

Liani had driven to Pacific Palisades‚ a lovely community near downtown Los Angeles where cliffs fall abruptly into the sea. There, shocked picnickers later reported, she jumped to her death.

Liani was 22 years old! And her God-given uniqueness was gone forever.

I called Liani's parents. From the tenderness with which Liani's mother spoke of her‚ I knew that she had been loved. But it was obvious to me that Liani had not felt loved.

"What are we doing?" I asked a colleague. "We're so busy teaching things. What's the value of teaching Liani to read, write, do arithmetic, if we taught her nothing of what she truly needed to know: how to live in joy, how to have a sense of personal worth and dignity?"

I decided to do something to help others who needed to feel loved. I would teach a course on love.

I spent months in library research but found little help. Almost all the books on love dealt with sex or romantic love. There was virtually nothing on love in general. But perhaps if I offered myself only as a facilitator, the students and I could teach one another and learn together. I called the course Love Class.

It took only one announcement to fill this non-credit course. I gave each student a reading list, but there were no assigned texts, no attendance requirements, no exams. We just shared our reading, our ideas, our experiences.

My premise is that love is learned. Our "teachers" are the loving people we encounter. If we find no models of love, then we grow up love-starved and unloving. The happy possibility, I told my students, is that love can be learned at any moment of our lives if we are willing to put in the time, the energy and the practice.

Few missed even one session of Love Class. I had to crowd the students closer together as they brought mothers, fathers, sisters, brothers, friends, husbands, wives—even grandparents. Scheduled to start at 7 p.m. and end at 10, the class often continued until well past midnight.

One of the first things I tried to get across was the importance of touching. "How many of you have hugged someone—other than a girlfriend, boyfriend or your spouse—within the past week?" Few hands went up. One student said, "I'm always afraid that my motives will be misinterpreted." From the nervous laughter, I could tell that many shared the young woman's feeling.

"Love has a need to be expressed physically‚" I responded. "I feel fortunate to have grown up in a passionate, hugging Italian family. I associate hugging with a more universal kind of love.

"But if you are afraid of being misunderstood, verbalize your feelings to the person you're hugging. And for people who are really uncomfortable about being embraced‚ a warm‚ two–handed handshake will satisfy the need to be touched."

We began to hug one another after each class. Eventually hugging became a common greeting among class members on campus.

We never left Love Class without a plan to share love. Once we decided to thank our parents. This produced unforgettable responses.

One student, a varsity football player, was especially uncomfortable with the assignment. He felt love strongly, but he had difficulty expressing it. It took a great deal of courage and determination for him to walk into the living room, raise his dad from the chair, and hug him warmly. He said‚ "I love you‚ Dad," and kissed him. His father's eyes welled up with tears as he muttered, "I know. And I love you too, Son." His father called me the next morning to say this had been one of the happiest moments of his life.

For another Love Class assignment we agreed to share something of ourselves, without expectation of reward. Some students helped disabled children. Others assisted derelicts on Skid Row. Many volunteered to work on suicide hot lines, hoping to find the Lianis before it was too late.

I went with one of my students, Joel, to a nursing home not far from U.S.C. A number of aged people were lying in beds in old cotton gowns, staring at the ceiling. Joel looked around and then asked, "What should I do?" I said‚ "You see that woman over there? Go say hello."

He went over and said, "Uh, hello."

She looked at him suspiciously for a minute. "Are you a relative?"

"No."

"Good! Sit down, young man."

Oh, the things she told him! This woman knew so much about love, pain, suffering. Even about approaching death, with which she had to make some kind of peace. But no one had cared about listening—until Joel. He started visiting her once a week. Soon, that day began to be known as "Joel's Day." He would come and all the old people would gather.

Then the elderly woman asked her daughter to bring her a glamorous dressing gown. When Joel came for his visit, he found her sitting up in bed in a beautiful satin gown, her hair done up stylishly. She hadn't had her hair fixed in ages: why have your hair done if nobody really sees you? Before long, others in the ward were dressing up for Joel.

The years since I began Love Class have been the most exciting of my life. While attempting to open doors to love for others, I found that the doors were opening for me.

I ate in a greasy spoon in Arizona not long ago. When I ordered pork chops, somebody said‚ "You're crazy, Nobody eats pork chops in a place like this." But the chops were magnificent.

"I'd like to meet the chef," I said to the waitress.

We walked back to the kitchen and there he was, a big, sweaty man. "What's the matter?" he demanded.

"Nothing. Those pork chops were just fantastic."

He looked at me as though I was out of my mind. Obviously it was hard for him to receive a compliment. Then he said warmly, "Would you like another?"

Isn't that beautiful? Had I not learned how to be loving, I would have thought nice things about the chef's pork chops, but probably wouldn't have told him—just as I had failed to tell Liani how much she had helped me that first day in class. That's one of the things love is: sharing joy with people.

Another secret of love is knowing that you are yourself special, that in all the world there is only one of you. If I had a magic wand and a single wish, I would wave the wand over everybody and have each individual say, and believe, "I like me, right this minute. Just as I am, and what I can become. I'm great."

The pursuit of love has made a wonder of my life. But what would my existence have been like had I never known Liani? Would I still be stammering out subject matter at students, year after year, with little concern about the vulnerable human beings behind the masks? Who can tell? Liani presented me with the challenge, and I took it up! It has made all the difference.

I wish Liani were here today. I would hold her in my arms and say, "Many people have helped me learn about love, but you gave me the impetus. Thank you. I love you." But I believe my love for Liani has, in some mysterious way already reached her.

The Stuffed Kitten

By Mae Hurley Ashworth

Each year at Christmas time, I set out upon the mantel a little old shabby, stuffed toy kitten. It's good for laughs among my friends. They don't know, you see, that the kitten is a kind of memorial—to a child who taught me the true meaning and spirit of giving.

The stuffed kitten came into my life when I was quite young and teaching third grade. It was the day before the Christmas holidays, and at the last recess I was unwrapping the gifts the children had brought me. The day was cold and rainy; so the boys and girls had remained indoors, and they crowded around my desk to watch.

I opened the packages with appropriate exclamations of gratitude over lacy handkerchiefs, pink powder puffs, candy boxes, and other familiar Christmas tributes to teacher.

Finally the last gift had been admired, and the children began drifting away. I started to work on plans for an after-holidays project.

When I looked up again, only one child remained at the table looking at the gifts. She did not touch anything. Her arms were stiff at her sides; but her head bent forward a little, so that the thick, jagged locks of her dust-colored hair hung over her eyes.

Poor Agnes, I thought. She looked like a small, dazzled sheep dog.

I had always felt a little guilty about Agnes because, no matter how hard I tried, I couldn't help being annoyed by her. She was neither pretty nor winsome, and her stupidity in class was exhausting.

Most of all‚ her unrestrained affection offended me. She had a habit of twining her soiled little fingers around my arm, or fingering my dress. Of course I never actually pushed her away. Dutifully‚ I endured her love.

"Well, Agnes," I said now. Abruptly she walked back to her seat, but a moment later I found her beside me again—clutching a toy stuffed kitten.

The kitten's skin was dismal yellow rayon, and its eyes were bright red beads. Agnes thrust it toward me in an agony of emotion. "It's for you," she whispered. "I couldn't buy you anything."

Her face was alive as I had never seen it before. Her eyes, usually dull, were shining. Under the sallowness of her skin spread a faint tinge of pink.

I felt dismayed. Not only did the kitten hold no charms for me, but I sensed that it was Agnes' own new and treasured possession—probably about the only Christmas she'd have.

So I said, "Oh‚ no, Agnes, you keep it for yourself!"

The shine fled from her eyes, and her shoulders drooped. "You—don't you like this kitten?"

I put on my heartiest manner. "Of course I like it, Agnes. If you are sure you want me to have it, why thank you!"

She set the kitten on its ill–made‚ wobbly legs, atop my desk. And the look on her face—I'll never forget it—was one of abject gratitude.

That afternoon, when the children were preparing to go home, Agnes detached herself from the line at the lockers and came over to my desk. She pushed her moist little hand into mine and whispered‚ "I'm glad you like the kitten. You do like it‚ don't you?"

I could sense her reaching out for warmth and approval, and I tried to rise to the occasion. "It's quite the nicest desk ornament I've ever had. Now run along, Agnes." I remembered to add, "And have a merry Christmas."

I watched the children as they marched out and scattered. Agnes started along down the walk, the rain pelting her bare head.

She was never to return to school. One her way home, a reckless driver ended the small life that had gone almost unnoticed in our community….

On Christmas Day, I went to my deserted schoolroom to face the stuffed kitten—and to have it out with my own sick conscience.

Confession is healing, and I felt better after I had poured out my remorse to Agnes' mute gift. The giver was gone, beyond reach of the love and encouragement she had so desperately needed, and that I could have given her.

Or could I have—without Agnes' gift and without her tragedy? Sometimes the capacity for responding to another's need comes only when the soul is forced to expand.

From now on, I promised the stuffed kitten‚ I would make children my life, not just my living. Besides teaching them the facts found in books, I would look into their hearts with love and with understanding. I'd give them myself, as well as my knowledge.

And heaven help me if I should ever again recoil from a grubby, seeking hand!

The Golden Chain

Josephine De Ford Terrill

Phyllis sat down on the long oak bench that stood across the end of the hall near the letter rack just outside the Dean of Women's door. The handwriting on her letter aroused her curiosity; she must read it before she went down to supper. It read:

Dear Phyllis:

You have been chosen from the group of girls in college this year to become a member of a club which is being formed at this time. Until we can have our first meeting to discuss the details more fully, we think it would be better if the existence of the club is unknown to the general student body.

Phyllis flipped the page over to find the signature. Margaret Eman, the lovable psychology teacher! Her eyes shone with excitement as she devoured the rest of the letter.

In the meantime, we have outlined some definite work to be done by the members. The requirements for this week are to be as follows:

First, please memorize these words: "I expect to pass through this life but once. If, therefore, there be any kindness I can show, or any good thing I can do to any fellow being, let me do it now, and not defer or neglect it‚ as I shall not pass this way again."

Second, please find time for a short get-acquainted conversation with ten freshmen girls, and keep a list of their names where no one will see it. Your purse will make a perfect hiding place.

If you feel that you do not care to join our club, please see me in my classroom no later than tomorrow afternoon. Otherwise we will consider you one of us. Remember, we shall depend upon you not to discuss this letter or the plans of the club with anyone.

Be diligent! Be true!

Very sincerely yours,

Margaret Eman

Phyllis read the letter through twice before she thrust it into her pocket and went down to supper. A sudden elation filled her. The words were ringing in her brain: "You have been chosen." "A club which is being formed." Was she being rewarded for some unrewarded act of friendliness, to be chosen from among all the girls at Wilbur College? Hardly knowing what she was doing, she chose her tray of food at the cafeteria counter and walked into the dining room. There was a scattering of students there. Two freshmen girls were sitting alone at a table over in one corner. Instantly Phyllis realized that here was her first opportunity to begin work for the club.

"Do you mind if I sit with you?" she asked.

The girls looked up in surprise and murmured something in unison‚ while Phyllis removed the food from her tray and sat down.

"I hope I'm not interrupting a private chat," she began.

"Not at all," assured one of the girls.

"We just stick together because we don't know anybody else‚" giggled the other.

Phyllis smiled. "Are you roommates?"

"Yes, we are," replied the first student, her voice warm and courteous.

"Is this your first year?"

"Yes, we're freshmen‚" laughed the second one again.

Phyllis liked them both at once, the one with her infectious sense of humor and the other whose manners were so lovely. They ate in silence for a moment, then a question was asked, and Phyllis soon found herself expanding garrulously, her new interest in philanthropy luring her on. She told them useful details of student life‚ to which both girls listened eagerly. After they had finished eating‚ Phyllis asked if they would like to walk around the campus as everyone did while waiting for the bell to call them in to worship. The girls readily agreed. As they passed groups of wistful-eyed freshmen‚ Phyllis imagined that they looked enviously at the two of their number who had grown so chummy with a sophomore.

As soon as worship was over, Phyllis hurried to her room and, snatching a piece of paper, wrote two names and thrust them into her purse.

After breakfast the next morning, before her 7:30 class began, Phyllis saw a girl standing beside the banister on the first floor of the administration building. Hildreth was one figure in the freshman class who could not fail to attract attention, for she was probably the tallest person in the entire school. Phyllis sauntered down the stairs and stopped two steps from the bottom, which put her on a level with the girl's face. "We're both early birds," she remarked, to open the conversation.

Relieved by the sense of ease which it gave her to be on a level with the one to whom she was speaking‚ Hildreth smiled, her face lighting up eagerly. "Then we should be lucky all day," she answered, her voice low and very musical.

Something in the girl's face touched Phyllis' heart. If there be any kindness I can show—Surely these first days in a new place must be hard for a girl as conspicuous as Hildreth, for there is always the inevitable joker whose lack of heart matches his lack of wit, always new faces to stare at with faintly concealed amusement. Seeing the girl's eyes, Phyllis resolved suddenly that she would come here a little early every morning to stand on the steps and talk with her.

"What class are you waiting for?" she asked.

"I'm taking psychology from Miss Eman."

"Isn't she marvelous?" exclaimed Phyllis.

"I think she is very charming and unusually capable as a teacher."

"Everyone adores her. I had her last year."

"Are you a junior?"

"No, a sophomore."

When Phyllis went to her room for a moment just before chapel, she did not forget to slip a new name into her purse, and with a heart pounding with joy, she repeated the already special verse: "I expect to pass this way but once. If, therefore…"

Every day Phyllis watched her mailbox for a letter announcing the meeting of the new club. Exactly one week from the day the first letter came, another lay in her compartment of the letter rack. Eagerly she opened it.

Dear Club Member,

By now you have begun to understand the meaning and the purpose of our organization. I want to thank you for the way you have responded to the work asked of you. Already we seem to have achieved our aim‚ which is: "Not a lonely girl at Wilbur College."

That corroding loneliness which destroys the happiness of the usual freshman's first weeks in school is not so evident this year, thanks to the work of our society. A friend with a smile and a cheery greeting is worth more at the beginning of the year than any number of friends at the end of the year. Those girls whom you have befriended this week will never forget you. I know because I was once a college freshman.

We find that we must postpone our meeting until a little later, but in the meantime, we want you to continue getting acquainted with freshman girls. Keep your list as you did last week. And please learn these words: "Happiness is a perfume which you cannot give to others without spilling a few drops on yourself."

If you should feel the urge to discuss our club with one of your friends, turn to Matthew Six and read the first six verses.

Be diligent! Be true!

Sincerely yours,

Margaret Eman

At the end of the third week, the third letter came.

Dear Club Member,

We have decided to postpone our meeting until you have had an opportunity to meet every girl in the freshman class. So do not grow weary of well-doing.

Have you found the friend you have always dreamed of finding someday? Perhaps she is a member of this year's freshman class.

Somewhere there waiteth in this world of ours‚

For one lone soul, another lonely soul;

Each chasing each other through all the weary hours,

And meeting strangely at one sudden goal.

I shall write you each week.

Be diligent! Be true!

Sincerely yours,

Margaret Eman

Phyllis had little time anymore for her own special friends, and though she missed them‚ the happiness she found in making new friends eclipsed the pleasure she had known in her old group.

She began to feel that she knew everyone in school, and she was constantly busy waving or smiling greetings as she went about her daily schedule. At the end of six weeks, she had the name of every girl in the freshman class in her purse. Only a very few of them had not responded to her offers of friendship, but she determined to undermine their misanthropic tendencies bit by bit as the year progressed.

She knew that she had given happiness to many; yet she realized that she herself had received more than any of them. Her own ability to offer and accept friendship had increased a thousandfold, her powers of sympathy and understanding had deepened beyond measure, her poise and manner had gained in grace. The "spilled drops" of the perfume of happiness which had fallen to her made her feel that she must be the happiest girl in all Wilbur College. She often wondered which of the other girls were members of the society, but there was no evidence of a planned campaign of friendship, except, perhaps, the entire lack of cliques and the unusual intermingling of freshmen and sophomores.

A week before the Christmas holidays, a special meeting of the sophomore class was called in the chapel one evening after worship. A short business session was conducted first, and the boys were dismissed to return to their rooms for their evening study period. The faculty advisor made a few remarks and then turned the girls over to the special speaker, the psychology teacher, Miss Eman.

"We have come here for a double purpose tonight, girls‚" she began‚ her eyes smiling in their personal way. "I hope you won't feel we have played too many tricks on you when we explain."

A faint suspicion began to brew in Phyllis' mind. She leaned forward in her seat.

"Last fall‚ your dean and I decided to form a club comprising certain sophomore girls. We wrote you letters asking that you join and perform certain duties, which you have done wholeheartedly. I think that all the members of that club are here tonight, so we are going to reveal ourselves. Will those girls who belong to that club please stand?"

There was a moment of hesitancy as if the girls were reluctant to disclose Miss Eman's partiality. Then, here and there, the shuffling of seats. A moment of breath-taking silence. Then a storm of laughter broke out, and wave after wave swept back and forth across the chapel. Every girl in the room was on her feet!

When the laughter had subsided‚ the teacher spoke: "I was sure you would be surprised to learn that our club consists of the entire class. I simply could not decide which of you to leave out, so I chose every one of you. But I was afraid that if you knew that you were working as a class, you would not feel that same enthusiasm as if you worked independently."

Phyllis nodded her head, realizing the truth in that.

"I should like to tell you," began Miss Eman, composing her features for a long, serious talk, "just what started the idea of our club. Last fall, as I sat in chapel watching the freshman girls take their places for their first assembly, I wondered how many of them were suffering from homesickness. In spite of all that is done during the first days of school by the dean of women, the administration, the teachers, and the older students, we still find way too much real distress among our new students.

"So I began to study the situation and decided that if we had an organization whose specific duty was to make friends with these girls, we could prevent much of this homesickness. We all realize that there is no particular character-building virtue in the agony of loneliness. It is true that we need to learn independence‚ to stand on our own feet, to know the value of solitude, but all these things can be learned much better when the mind is free.

"Out of the slough of loneliness sometimes grow rare and beautiful characters, but more often that slough produces blighted and bitter personalities. In most cases here in school that early depression passes away with the finding of friends, but in the meantime there is much needless heartache. Far too often friendships are not formed until near the end of the year, whereas had they been made at the beginning, much happiness and benefit might have been realized.

"This year, with the help of my faithful crew of sophomore girls, we have had less homesickness than in any other year I have ever known. Innumerable fine friendships have formed already. School spirit and general cooperation have improved unbelievably."

As the tears gathered in her eyes, Phyllis knew the taste of real happiness. She recalled her struggles with Doreen, who at first was so unresponsive, so uncaring. Pauline had been contemptuous of the simple ways of their school. Harriet had not understood why rules must be obeyed.

Miss Eman continued: "The first week of school I talked personally with every one of the freshman girls. The second week I found time for a moment with every sophomore girl. I asked many of them how they felt this year in comparison to the way they felt at that time last year. Their answers convinced me that among them I would find the helpers we needed. We teach many subjects here in Wilbur College, but to me the most important thing to learn is the art of being kind. And to be kind in this case means to be friendly. There was a little book published a few years ago titled The New Thing In Her Heart. It was the story of a secret which an elderly woman whispered into the ear of a young girl. The secret was this: Everybody is lonesome! If we could always remember that, I am sure that we should always be kind."

There was a sudden trembling in the speaker's voice. She paused a moment. Then she said: "Let us repeat our first memory verse in unison."

Slowly, with subdued emotion, they began: "I expect to pass through this life but once. If, therefore, there be any kindness I can show, or any good thing I can do to any fellow being, let me do it now, and not defer or neglect it, as I shall not pass this way again."

"Now our aim."

"Not a lonely girl in Wilbur College!"

"Our motto."

"Kindness is the golden chain by which society is held together."

"Thank you, girls. And now may I tell you how much we appreciate your work this fall. The faculty of Wilbur College is proud of its class of sophomore girls. You have solved many problems for us, and you have prevented many more problems from developing. We shall always be grateful to you. And now that you have done your work so well, we feel that there is no longer a need for our society to continue. Our first meeting is also our last. I am sure that each of you has learned enough about the joy of making friends to lead you to continue this delightful hobby throughout your entire life. You will always remember that we pass our way but once. Opportunities lost do not come again."

There was a moment's pause; then she continued. "Our experiment this year has been abundantly successful. Whether we shall try it again next year, we do not know. For the present, our work is done. Shall we feel free now to discuss our society and its methods? I shall leave that to the personal judgment of each girl. It seems to me, however‚ that we shall realize a more lingering satisfaction if we do not publish it abroad—at least until this present year is over. We do not want our freshman sisters," she laughed, "to think that we have gained their friendship by the aid of conspiracy."

"I believe that it is time now to return to your study period. Shall we stand and repeat for the first and last time, in unison, the last verse we learned?"

The girls rose, and with hushed voices repeated, "Make it a rule, and pray God to help you keep it, never to lie down at night without being able to say: 'I have made one human being a little wise‚ or a little happier, or at least a little better‚ this day.'"

Margaret Eman's eyes were shining. "And now may I say 'Good night' to the grandest group of sophomore girls in any college in the world?"

The Tiger

Mary Dirlam

(Teachers‚ like all mortals, yearn to be appreciated‚ liked, and loved. Yet it is the nature of the business they are in that they sometimes have to choose between popularity and its opposite, knowing deep down that and ounce of long–term respect and appreciation is worth a ton of short–term popularity. Occasionally, during the swift-flying years, our lives are enriched by mentors with tough love, teachers willing to be misunderstood in order that the student is not wrecked on the shoals of premature adulation or egocentricity. Mark Spencer found that out too late.)

It seemed to Mark Spencer that in this room, at this moment, he had reached a pausing point. One phase of his life was over; another was about to begin.

His artist's eye took in the element of design in his immediate surroundings. There, sitting across the desk from him, was Dean Harber—all angles‚ this man, with his wiry, energetic body. Through the window were the familiar outlines of the Bryant Art School buildings, which had been Mark's home for the past four years. On Harber's desk was the large rectangular folder marked "Spencer."

Harber leafed idly through the folder before he spoke. Then he looked up to smile at the young man who sat opposite him.

"Well, here we are, Mark," he said. "You're through with us now. It's time. You've learned what we could teach you here. The rest will be work, experience, development."

"I know," Mark murmured. He watched in a detached way as the dean continued to leaf through his paintings. These papers and canvases were his achievements, the products of all the years during which he had known he was going to become an artist.

Dean Harber pulled out a watercolor from the folder and nodded in response. "Yes," he said. "You'll make the grade. They'll recognize you slowly—the artists first, then the critics. Sooner or later the public will catch on too."

"Why are you looking at that landscape?" Mark questioned. "It's one of my high school things. A bad job."

"It has faults," Harber replied. "Labored—muddy. Yet there's something in it, too. Your high school work has always interested me, you know. It has ever since that day when your first folder came into my office." He put the watercolor down and fell into a reminiscent mood. "That folder—Mark Spencer, Fairview High School, age 17. We had hundreds of high school folders that year. But yours had something different about it. Yours showed development, the ability to learn—to go from good to better. Do you know what else it showed?"

"No," said Mark. "What else?"

"A teacher. I've always wanted to ask you about that teacher. Whoever it was, he knew what you could do and how to get it out of you."

"Old Greenbaum," Mark said softly. "Thomas J. Greenbaum. But—"

"But what?" asked Harber.

"I don't know what I was going to say exactly," Mark laughed. "Except that Greenbaum‚ my high school art teacher‚ wasn't the kind of man you think he was. He was a tiger. I really hated him. He always had it in for me, you see. He was fairly decent with most of the others‚ but everything I did was wrong. Whenever I tried to meet him halfway, he'd always lash back at me with some sarcastic remark—putting me in my place. It always seemed as though he tried to be as unpleasant as he could."

Mark paused, staring at the watercolor which Harber had taken out of his folder. It was indeed a bad job—clumsy, uncertain; but he hadn't thought so at the time. It had taken Mark years to learn how to criticize his own work. Back in high school, every painting he'd done had seemed special and wonderful to him—even this watercolor.

Mark remembered the day in June, four years ago, when he had put this same watercolor into the folder that was going to Bryant Art School. It had been just the day before commencement, and classes at Fairview had already ended for the school year. Mark, all his thoughts bent on his urgent desire to win the Bryant four-year scholarship, had come into the school art studio to assemble the last of the paintings and drawings that he would submit to Bryant as examples of his work. He had been holding the watercolor admiringly before him, pleased as he always was with what he had done, when Old Greenbaum entered the room.

"I am sorry," Greenbaum commented acidly, "to interrupt this touching scene between the artist and his work. I hope I'm not intruding."

Mark flushed, putting the watercolor down on the table. Old Tiger Greenbaum and his poisonous tongue. Well‚ he wasn't going to have to put up with it much longer.

Greenbaum walked over to the painting and looked at it critically. "All blobbed up‚" he said dryly. "I wonder if you'll ever get over thinking that watercolor is oil paint."

"Listen, Mr. Greenbaum‚" Mark began. "I…"

Greenbaum interrupted as though Mark had not spoken. His gnarled index finger traced a line over the painting. "From there to there," he said in his rasping, metallic voice‚ "it's messy, undecided. Over here," he observed, pointing to another section, "the color looks as if it had been scrubbed with a wash brush." He seemed to hesitate for a moment. "The tree," he added grudgingly, "the tree is good."

Mark tried to swallow his anger, as he had so many times before in the course of that year. He had bitten his lips and said nothing on all those occasions when Greenbaum had made him do sketch after sketch of the same subject—refusing to admit, even when Mark was certain that what he had done was flawless, that it could not be done better. He had worked in silent rage on difficult projects in perspective which he had no desire to attempt but which Greenbaum had insisted that he do. He had, more times than he could remember, resisted the temptation to throw his brush or charcoal stick in Greenbaum's face.

It had been necessary, Mark thought, that he should control his ever-mounting resentment of this inflexible, unsympathetic teacher. He couldn't afford to tell him off and to drop his course in art. For Mark knew, and had never questioned, that he must become a painter. That meant he must go to art school, and to go to art school, his high school record must be as superior as he could make it. There would be no art school for him without a scholarship‚ and no scholarship without real accomplishment in his high school art courses.

But now the school year was over. Whatever Old Greenbaum had had to say about Mark had already been said on the little blank which Bryant Art School sent to the teachers of scholarship candidates. And Mark was bitterly certain that Greenbaum's recommendation had been, at best, a halfhearted one.

He grabbed his watercolor from the table, where Greenbaum was standing before it. "I'm afraid I'm not interested in the rest of your criticism, Mr. Greenbaum," he said heatedly. "We're parting company now, and I can't say I'm sorry. You've never liked me—I don't know why, and I don't care anymore. It goes without saying that I haven't liked you much, either. If I hadn't known, if I hadn't been sure, that I'm good, you would have discouraged me from ever going on with art. Maybe that's what you were trying to do, but I …"

Greenbaum, his face impassive, broke in on the angry boy before him. "But you never questioned your talent. We both know that. You've always been certain of yourself, of our paintings. In your own opinion, you could do no wrong."

"Come off it!" Mark retorted, forgetting in his emotion that he was talking to a teacher. "You must have known, even if you wouldn't admit it, that I'm as good a student as you've had at Fairview. You were standing right here, in this room, when Gustav Scholl told us both that I was one of the most promising students he'd seen in this country."

Gustav Scholl was a distinguished German painter who had visited Fairview High School earlier in the year, at Greenbaum's invitation. Greenbaum had unbent enough to make a special point of showing Mark's work to Scholl, and Scholl's reaction had been one of glowing enthusiasm. "My friend," he'd said, grabbing Greenbaum's arm in excitement, "this young man will do fine things!"

Now Mr. Greenbaum's lips pulled into a tight line as he said, "Ah, yes, our exuberant friend Scholl! His mistimed admiration did you a wrong‚ I think. He gave you that much more reason to believe in your own superiority."

Mark stuffed the last of his paintings into his folder. "And that," he replied, "is more than you've ever done for me. A complete stranger walking into this studio for a few minutes—and he gave me more encouragement than you've given me in a whole year. I could add," he said bitingly, "that Scholl's name means a good bit more in the world of art than your own."

A shadow of pain passed over Greenbaum's face, before he smiled the odd, stiff smile that Mark had come to know and mistrust. But he made no answer, and Mark took advantage of the pause to pick up his folder and leave the room.

Once out in the bright June sunshine‚ walking for the last time down the path that led from the art studio to the main building of Fairview High School, Mark experienced a twinge of regret. Maybe he shouldn't have been so rough on Greenbaum. There was no longer any point in nursing the grievances that had built up during the past year. Still, he couldn't believe that he had been unfair. Perhaps he'd even done some good. Greenbaum might think over what Mark had said to him and might recognize the justice of it.

Actually‚ Mark admitted to himself‚ Greenbaum was all right with the usual run of students. Most of the boys and girls at Fairview liked him. He was patient and gentle with the pupil who could hardly handle a brush, always encouraging the awkward student who showed scattered signs of improvement. Why had he chosen Mark as his particular victim? Mark could only believe that it was jealousy—jealousy at discovering a teenager who already had more ability than Greenbaum himself possessed at the age of 58….

It had all been so long ago—not long as years go‚ but long in experience. Now, sitting in Dean Harber's office‚ Mark found it hard to remember all the details of that year before he had been awarded the scholarship to Bryant Art School. At Bryant he had worked hard, won three major prizes, even sold one or two of his oil paintings. When his class graduated next week, he would be announced as the winner of a two-year traveling fellowship to France. There he would study with Gustav Scholl himself, who now had a studio in Paris. Fairview High and Greenbaum seemed far away.

"You've changed, you know‚" Harber said suddenly. "My only doubt about giving you that scholarship in 1948 was a personal one. When you came to interview with me, you were cocky—too sure of yourself. Now you're still sure of yourself, as you ought to be. But you've learned to take criticism, and to know what your limitations are."

Mark grinned. "Come to think of it," he said, "I suppose I was pretty unbearable during the interview. This teacher I just mentioned to you—Greenbaum—may have been partly responsible. I got so little praise from him that I felt I had to blow my own horn."

"Greenbaum?" asked Dean Harber, raising his eyebrows. "Greenbaum never praised you?"

"Why, no," Mark answered. "As I say, he always had it in for me."

Harber rose from his desk and walked over to a filing cabinet. After leafing through several folders, he finally pulled out a piece of paper. "Read this," he suggested‚ handing it to Mark.

Mark took the paper, unfolded it carefully, and read.

Fairview High School

Fairview, Ohio

Department of Art

June 30, 1948

Dear Dean Harber:

I presume upon your time to write this letter about Mark Spencer, a candidate for the Bryant Art School four-year scholarship, because I feel the answers to questions on the standard blank do not fully suggest this boy's unusual qualifications.

You have already had one interview with Mark Spencer. I daresay that you found him vain of his talents, overconfident of his prospects. I have found him so, too, and have done what I could to discourage these traits.

I hope I am not out of order if I suggest that this impression is a misleading one. Mark Spencer's faults, such as they are, are the faults of a boy whose talent is truly extraordinary. He is still young; he will grow up; and I am confident that he will become a distinguished artist. If he is too ready to acknowledge his own ability, it is only because that ability is great, and is so much the center of his life and ambitions. He is compelled, more than the ordinary person, to believe in himself.

Throughout his high school years, Mark Spencer has never been sure that he would be able to continue his study of art. There is little money in his family, and his chance to succeed at what he wants most to do depends entirely upon the recognition he can win from such "powers" as you represent. Once he is assured that his chance will be given him, he will be less insecure, more able to take criticism and to be what he has it in him to be.

I do not urge that your scholarship be awarded to Mark Spencer for personal reasons; his talent is too pronounced to make that necessary. But I do urge that his candidacy should not, for personal reasons, be viewed with disfavor.

Very truly yours,

Thomas J. Greenbaum

"It was this letter," Dean Harber observed as Mark finished reading, "that helped to clear away my last doubts as to the advisability of awarding you the Bryant scholarship. I was convinced that your Mr. Greenbaum knew the boy he spoke of. And," Harber added smiling, "I wasn't wrong."

Mark, staring at the letter, didn't reply. "June 30, 1948," the date on the letterhead—that would have been four, possibly five days after the June afternoon on which he had given Old Greenbaum a piece of his mind. Then Greenbaum had written this letter. Mark wondered unhappily whether he himself could ever write such a letter after such an incident.

His eye caught one of Greenbaum's phrases and fixed on it—"to be what he has it in him to be." That was how it was, then. More than Scholl, more than even Mark himself, Old Greenbaum must have had a high vision of what Mark had it in him to be; a vision so determined that he was willing to sacrifice his student's affection for himself as a teacher in order to further his future as an artist.

"You say that Greenbaum 'had it in' for you," Harber observed. "I can see from your expression that this letter has suggested otherwise. Why don't you let me give you an extra ticket for the commencement exercises?" he suggested. "I have an idea that Mr. Thomas Greenbaum would be the proudest man in the auditorium if he could see you walk across that platform as the winner of the two-year fellowship to Paris."

Mark looked up, his face red, as he put the letter back on Harber's desk. Harber was right—he knew that now. No one he had known in his life would be so proud of his present success as Old Greenbaum. No one he had known deserved so well to be proud.

Mark's glance fell again on the old watercolor which Harber had pulled out of his folder. He would never again, he reflected, look at this watercolor without a stab of regret.

Vividly, remembered images from the past flooded before him. Greenbaum's knobby finger on his work: "Erase those lines—do it again. You can do in one line what you've done in several." Greenbaum's cool, appraising eye taking in a finished sketch: "Not bad—and not so good as you think it is, either." And then the image which came not from memory but from imagination; an old man sitting down to write a letter full of understanding and faith.

"Shall we send him a ticket?" the dean was saying.

Mark shook his head. For no ticket could now be sent—no grateful gesture was possible any longer.

"Thank you, Dean Harber," he said. " I wish I could. But Mr. Greenbaum died two years ago."

End of file.